The film program Kino na rubu presents filmmakers who work on the edge of the film genre, crossing through experimental, animated, documentary and feature films. "Kino na rubu” screens films with strong author procedures and techniques, a free narrative approach, diversity of artistic expressions and media, and high creative standards in expressing film visions. The program is delivered in five thematic blocks throughout the year. Each block comprises film screenings and talks.
After the first thematic block titled Nasljeđe i suvremenost – Zagreb film / Heritage and Modernity – Zagreb Film, and the second - Author's Block, dedicated to the composer and sound designer Vjeran Šalamon, in the third thematic block we present the Anthropological Film Experiments of Belgian author Laurent van Lancker and Croatian author Dan Oki, whose work is characterized by daily and anthropological film narratives. Laurent van Lancker will present the film from 2003 - Thirty-one Nights, my Palestinian Encounters, a film diary that maps the discovery of a different Palestine - intimate, self-reflexive and full of hidden poetry, while Oki's Absence of Telepresence is a hybrid of documentary, feature film and experiment, through personal cinematic and historical thinking questions our relationship with communication technologies. Dr. sc. Ivana Podnar will talk to the authors after the screening of the films.
Block 3# Anthropological film experiments
October 30 at 7 p.m., MSU Gorgona hall
About the films
Thirty-one Nights, my Palestinian Encounters, 2003, 28 min
Screenwriter and director: Laurent van Lancker
Thirty-one encounters, thirty-one nights: a personal diary that maps the discovery of a different Palestine - intimate, self-reflexive and full of hidden poetry.
A personal diary that maps the discovery of a different Palestine – intimate, self-reflexive and full of hidden poetry. In a set of narrative portraits the narrator (the artist himself) focuses on his encounters with Palestinian citizens he has come to know. The film is structured into 31 episodes, each of them representing one night in which the artist encountered a person or an event. ’ Thirty-one nights, my Palestinian Encounters’ is not only a patchwork of personal histories but also an autobiographical and artistic travelling document. The stories are combined with nightly film shots – realist or abstract – that represent the experiences of the artist himself.
Absence of Telepresence, 2023, 25 min
Screenwriter and director: Dan Oki
The absence of telepresence is a personal cinematic reflection of the gradual merging of phone, address book, camera and computer into one gadget. A hybrid of documentary, feature film and experiment about our relationship to communication technologies.
The cinematic mix consists of essayistic narratives and images inspired by historical artists whose works are closely related to communication protocols: Buster Keaton, Sophie Call and Nam June Paik. The director's photo series of people with smartphones taken in Seoul in 2017 and Tokyo in 1997 are merged with the media performances of the following artists: Sandra Sterla, Gilda Bavčević, William Linn and Nina Kamenjarin. The technological and artistic concepts of telephones in recent history were performed and presented simultaneously with nostalgia, futurism and humour.
About the guests
Laurent van Lancker studied both Film and Anthropology and holds a PhD in Audiovisual Art. He lectures at filmschools (INSAS Brussels, Film Academy Amsterdam), universities (WWU Münster, AMU Marseille). He is a Professor of Audiovisual Anthropology at Aix-Marseille University. He co-founded SIC – SoundImageCulture project lab. He made fifteen films (experimental, documentaries and fiction) and won nine awards. His early documentary works explored social and religious themes, followed by a series of short works called ‘Experimental Ethnographies’. Lately, he made three long-feature films about migration themes – Brak (fiction), Kalès (documentary), and We Others (hybrid). His works draw on various modes: Collaborative, Hybrid and Sensory cinema. They propose a dialogue between ethics and aesthetics, poetics and politics.
Dan Oki/Slobodan Jokić is a filmmaker and visual artist, teaching as a Professor at the University of Split Arts Academy (UMAS) and at the University of Zagreb Academy of Film and Drama. Dan Oki belongs to the generation of artists who in the 1990s along with photography and performance worked on cinematographic databases, interactive video and computer animation. His works in the field of visual arts are part of Croatian and International collections. As a producer, writer and director he has made six independent feature films. He has also made around 30 shorts. His films have been shown at Festivals like Motovun Film Festival, Croatia; Brooklyn Film Festival, New York, USA; International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Image Forum Film Festival, Tokyo, Japan; Pula Film Festival, Croatia; SEE Film Festival, LA, USA; European Media Art Festival, Osnabruck, etc. He is a member of the Croatian Film Directors Guild in Zagreb and of the Croatian Visual Artists Association in Split.
Ivana Podnar graduated in art history and literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. Since 2014, she has been teaching art history, visual culture and art today at the Faculty of Architecture, School of Design, University of Zagreb. In 2013, she received her doctorate in urban iconology at the Department of Art History of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. Her research interests are focused on urban iconography, the relationship between art and the politics of public space, the iconography of contemporary architecture, and visual culture.
Editor and program manager: Miranda Herceg
